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"Worship Him, All You Gods"


maklelan

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I just submitted my final proposal for this November's SBL, which will take place in Atlanta, home to the Society of Biblical Literature. Following is my proposal. I think it's a particularly interesting topic. I welcome any comments, questions, or critiques.

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I just submitted my final proposal for this November's SBL, which will take place in Atlanta, home to the Society of Biblical Literature. Following is my proposal. I think it's a particularly interesting topic. I welcome any comments, questions, or critiques.

So, Mak, ol boy...you are planning to present it in a language other than English, eh? Even for a spelling bee nerd like myself the language is definitely a dictionary scratcher. I think they (Hopefully, me as well if I can get the $ together) at the SBL will love it.

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I just submitted my final proposal for this November's SBL, which will take place in Atlanta, home to the Society of Biblical Literature. Following is my proposal. I think it's a particularly interesting topic. I welcome any comments, questions, or critiques.

Best of wishes!

What do you make of these?

Psalm 95:3 "For the Lord is a great God, a great king over all gods."

Who is speaking in verses 1-7 and then 8-11?

Psalm 97:9 "For thou, Lord, art most high over all the earth, far exalted above all gods."

Psalm 135: 5 "I know that the Lord is great, that our Lord is above all gods."

If the "gods of the nations are idols of silver and gold, made by the hands of men, they have

mouths that cannot speak and eyes that cannot see; they have ears that do not hear, and

there is no breath in their nostrils" (135:15-17), "nostrils that cannot smell, [and]

with their hands they cannot feel, with their feet they cannot walk, and no sound

comes from their throats (115:5-7), then does the God of Israel have a mouth

that speaks, eyes that see, ears that hear, nostrils that breathe and smell, hands that feel, feet

that walk, and a throat that emits sound?

Psalm 136: 2-3 "Give thanks to the God of gods...Give thanks to the Lord of lords..."

Bernard

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Best of wishes!

What do you make of these?

These are appealing to rhetoric of incomparability. Yhwh is just so much cooler than all the other gods. The rhetoric looses it's potency if we conclude that the other gods are really nothing ("God is so much more powerful than things that don't exist!"). Psalm 82 provides the event that leads to Yhwh's accession to kingship over the other gods. Similar rhetoric is found in numerous places among the polytheism of Mesopotamia. Here are a few examples:

An Assyrian hymn to Shamash:

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I just submitted my final proposal for this November's SBL, which will take place in Atlanta, home to the Society of Biblical Literature. Following is my proposal. I think it's a particularly interesting topic. I welcome any comments, questions, or critiques.

I really like the way you've expressed your thesis. It makes a lot of sense historically. I hope to attend.

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I really like the way you've expressed your thesis. It makes a lot of sense historically. I hope to attend.

Thanks Dave. I've been wrestling for a while with the different definitions of monotheism. None of them really satisfy me. When I brought my work with Deuteronomy 32 and the conflation of the sons of God and the angels into the picture it all kinda made sense. I still have a whole bunch of unpacking to do, but it just seems to smooth out a lot of the wrinkles in the other theories. I shared my proposal on my blog and I had an interesting comment regarding an Akkadian prayer to Shamash you might be interested in.

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You know Mak... this is probably the most powerful "prooftext" we have. I was just contemplating the strength of it.

Pslam 97

7 Confounded be all they that serve graven bimages, that boast themselves of idols: worship him, all ye gods.

There is no way anyone can deny that "angels" do not exist and that they ar not Imortal beings. or that these are mere "human judges". rofl.gif

Heb. 1: 6

6 And again, when he [ie God the father] bringeth in the firstbegotten [ie jesus Christ the son] into the world, he [ie God the father] saith, And let all the angels [ie sons of God, gods] of God worship him.

good.gif

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I like the idea. NT scholar from Rice U, April DeConick is preparing a lecture for SBL, partially on the concept that such issues are so slow to be accepted by many "scholars" of the Bible.

It becomes an issue of continually presenting the evidence, until people wake up and smell the real coffee (or pick your LDS poison of choice).

We have to get people beyond an earth-centric model of the Bible, so we can allow the Galileos to show us what is really going on.

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